BDT development

Business Data Toolkit (BDT) is the new way of programming in SAP. This is available in IS-PS (public sector) solution and I guess this is available in some other IS solutions such as insurance etc., This is a concept in which SAP provides you all the development components with which you can build your own screens and fields and weave it nicely within the existing SAP application. This is available mostly for the master data maintenance.

Given this input, I'll try to explain the concept in which I understood. Every SAP transaction can be thought in abstract to have the following components:
1. Data element & Domains
2. Screen fields
3. Field grouping (functional set of fields)
4. Views (Combination of one or more field group)
5. Sections (Combination of one or more views)
6. Screen (Combination of one or more sections)
7. Transaction (With one or more screen in a pre determined sequence)

If this above concept is clear, then it is very easy to understand and can even start development using BDT. For those who do not have enough exposure to the Grants or other modules that have BDT, I’ll try to give an analogy using the customer master record.

In the customer master the fields that are in the KNA1 table are the data elements and domains. The screen fields are the same as the data element, but the screen needs to be built and the definition of the screen specific parameters was defined in SAP’s delivered screen itself. For example the customer name is the data element AD_NAME1 and the related screen field is ADDR1_DATA-NAME1 (Program SAPMF02D/Screen 7000)

The field grouping is the group of functionally related screen fields, which can be turned as Required, Optional or Hidden using the configuration. In this case it could be the set of fields that cover the Street address

The views can be Street address and the PO Box address together

And the Section may be the combination of Name, Search term, Street address and the PO Box address.

The screen could be the Address, Control Data, etc.,

The screen sequence is defined and the transaction XK01/02/03 is created.

With the same idea in mind SAP had given the same concept as a development tool. This eliminates the need of extending the SAP’s standard table by appending structure. And also it gives you the flexibility to append two dimensional objects such as tables as well.